The U.S. Department of Commerce has stated the need to be able to add a tag to identify the point of origin of textiles (raw materials, yarn, fabric, clothing, security documents, currency, etc.), detail manufacturing information, and also for tracking goods. This identification would help to prevent counterfeiting, to enforce international quotas, to collect applicable import duties, to promote manufacturing quality control and e-commerce, and to identify textiles that have been discarded. A capability such as this could also be used in reclamation and waste remediation. Such an identification method is desirably inexpensive to apply, easy to decode/encode, information-rich, non-toxic, non-obvious, long-lasting, applicable to rough-textured fabric, and difficult to duplicate.
Two technologies have attempted to address the textile need, but were found to fall short on the full solution identified by the textile industry. One uses biomarkers in which a specific DNA is applied to fabric, thereby allowing this marker to subsequently be detected in a highly specific manner using some already developed DNA-detecting technology. The other uses nanobarcodes in which different metals are electrodeposited into tiny channels of a material and then recovered to yield small striped rods. A reader detects mixtures of these metallic nanobarcodes.
There is a continuing need for identification tagging systems for materials, such as textiles.